The Hindu : Sport : A wish list for the New Year

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 23, 2006
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Sport

A wish list for the New Year

Rohit Brijnath's take on happenings he'd like to see in 2007

1. Hockey needs a miracle. Or in other words, Mr. K.P.S. Gill, Mr. Jothikumaran, thank you, but please, go, now.

2. Paes and Bhupathi take an oath of silence about each other. Else we'll get a court order for a gag.

3. Doesn't matter if you think birdies and eagles are matters best left to ornithologists, just go watch Jeev play, let your presence tell him India appreciates him.

4. Roddick, Nadal, Blake, Murray, Davydenko hold a `Deconstructing Roger' summit. First item on the agenda: lose the awe, fellows.

5. Criticising the ICC is easy, but if India's cricket officials really want to impress us could they please fix rattling stadiums, wake up dead wickets and investigate why no Indian is on the elite panel of umpires.

6. A heavyweight boxing champion whose name we remember. It's no good when the most famous boxer of recent times is the Cinderella Man.

7. The modelling can wait, acting will hold, interior designing is not going anywhere. Serena, Venus, ladies, remember tennis? It's time for a final flourish.

8. So this is naïve, but would it be so difficult to go 365 days without finding that a sporting champion for whom you stayed awake till 5 a.m. to cheer had a steroid in his/her urine.

Spirit of sport

9. Ganguly and V.V.S. Laxman make us nostalgic, but Sreesanth does something more powerful. Young men like him provide hope, and there is no superior elixir. India needs this in 2007, this adrenaline shot in the heart, this boyish expressiveness.

But it also wants Sreesanth to know the line between fire and insolence. A man may be spirited yet be true to cricket's spirit.

10. More of the same from Tiger Woods. Always we talk of desire, discipline, work ethic, creativity, concentration, and how men lack one quality, or a measure of the other. But this man embodies it all.

To watch him is to be grateful.

11. The very worst of sport in 2006 was diving in football for it was a corruption of an art, theatrics in a game which has enough legitimate drama; the very best in 2007 would be retrospective punishment throughout the game. The great game deserves no less.

12. Martina Hingis wins a Grand Slam. Because she plays tennis like it ought to be.

13. So many decades after Jackie Robinson endured taunts in the baseball league, and Jesse Owens sat in the car and ate breakfast on road trips while his white teammates ate in restaurants he was not allowed into, athletes still confront racism in sport.

What irony that in Italy, home of the planet's finest football team, black players are met with monkey chants and local players give fascist salutes. If teams are not stripped of points because of racist fans, then the game is not serious.

14. Cricket stops pulling the boundaries in. Sixes should never be gifts, and players running three, hurtling between wickets, sometimes paying the ultimate cricketing price for flawed judgement, should not become extinct.

Make a choice

15. Tendulkar rediscovers his confidence or makes his choice. Everyone struggles, but it's just harder to watch him doing so. Men like him must waltz into their sunsets, never limp.

16. Tennis' uniqueness lies in the fact it has no seconds like boxing, no sideline instructions like football, no messages into the middle like cricket. You meet your demons alone, your doubts single-handedly.

It's why women's tennis' decision to allow on-court coaching next year should be rescinded. It is plain silly and way wrong.

17. Someone explains to us finally why wushu is at the Asian Games. And soft tennis. And trampolining. What's next? Ballroom dancing? Ludo?

18. A law that restricts the hype before an Ashes series. Napoleon versus Wellington seemed like a schoolyard mudfight in comparison.

19. Jose Mourinho learns humility and shuts up.

20. Journalists don't always ask the most probing questions, but any athlete who says "I gave 200 per cent", "it hasn't sunk in yet" and "we're taking it one game at a time" in the same press conference gets to have dinner with Mourinho after Chelsea loses the title.

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